The most prominent anti-marijuana group in the country is touting the absence of language in a key Congressional funding bill that has protected the medical marijuana industry in Colorado and beyond from federal prosecution in recent years. But a cannabis advocate dismisses the suggestion that this development could soon unleash a law-enforcement blitzkrieg against the MMJ biz.
Browsing: Legalize It
The recent arrests and legal actions against a former Marijuana Enforcement Division official and several marijuana industry license-holders here in Colorado has been touted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions as an example of why this industry is not working. In a letter to congressional leaders on May 1, he also suggested that in some way the regulated marijuana industry contributes to more illegal marijuana trafficking. In actuality, a regulated system like the one in Colorado has created a boom for us in the areas of job creation, revenue generation and increased law enforcement support, and the list goes on.
Members of the Justice Department’s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety have been ordered to “undertake a review of existing policies” regarding federal marijuana law enforcement, among other things. Their report is due on or before July 27, and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws believes the document may use as its template a list by a fellow at the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation of eleven ways the administration of President Donald Trump can shut down legal cannabis.
Days after a letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions surfaced, asking congressional leaders to revoke federal protections for medical marijuana, senators have introduced a bill that would protect medical marijuana patients in states where it’s legal while also removing cannabidiol (CBD) from the Controlled Substances Act and expanding research on marijuana.
Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Arkansas) introduced the Compassionate Access Research and Respect the States (CARERS) Act on June 15. The bill would protect medical marijuana users from federal prosecution, allow Department of Veterans Affairs doctors to recommend medical marijuana to veterans, and loosen multiple restrictions on cannabis research and medical compounds.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws is sending a clear signal to the administration of President Donald Trump following the latest negative words and deeds aimed at legal marijuana in Colorado and beyond by Justice Department officials Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein. In the words of NORML policy director Justin Strekal, “Should the Department of Justice decide to throw out the Tenth Amendment and respect for states’ rights as they govern their own intrastate commerce, they’re going to have a fight on their hands.”
Amy Diiullo has been playing sports and working out since high school…and she’s been smoking marijuana about that long, as well. She studied exercise science in college, and as she learned the technical aspects of working out and being healthy, she realized that cannabis could help her achieve her fitness goals.
Now she’s running the Fit for 420 program in Denver. We recently sat down with her to learn more about how to work out with marijuana.
Westword: How did you first start using cannabis in your workouts?
Amy Diiullo: I’ve always been very active. I was an athlete in high school and ran track, cross-country and did tennis and a whole bunch of other sports, and I also used cannabis recreationally. I don’t think when you’re younger that there might be some synergistic effects there — that you might be using cannabis because you’re sore or having trouble sleeping, or that it could be related to activity. I got more involved with it in college on the science side — a very physiology-based practicum of learning how exercise affects your body, which then translates to how cannabis can affect your body. So when we talk about cannabis or THC being a bronchodilator, what that means is it opens up the blood vessels in your lungs to receive potentially more oxygen. So there’s a direct correlation between understanding some of the physiological effects of exercise and the physiological effects of cannabis in the body and the different receptors.
For me, it just became a natural marriage. If you’re sore, using topicals or a hash bath is a really easy solution, but it also translated to asking: How can this affect my workout itself?
The Trump administration picked an unfortunate hashtag for President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress on February 28: #JointSession. In honor of that joint session, here are some of our favorite joint-session pictures on Instagram this week.
Whether it’s a photo of a grow operation, the bud or a perfectly rolled joint, we’re always in the mood for some good weed porn. Here are our favorite pictures from dispensaries that posted on Instagram this past week.
Debbie Moak, director of the Arizona Governor’s Office of Youth, Faith and Family, worked closely with the group that helped defeat Proposition 205 in November.
That much is not in dispute. But did Moak use the resources of her office — including her work time — improperly to campaign against the marijuana-legalization measure?
Moak denies it, but e-mails New Times obtained from the governor’s office under Arizona’s public-records law show that to some extent she did.
Gage Skidmore
It hasn’t even been three weeks since Proposition 205 went down to defeat on election day, but advocates for cannabis-law reform in Arizona already have three new proposals to consider.
Here is a roundup of the three proposals: